Somali police rape woman, then jail her

Part of the propaganda of NATO country governments to sell their “humanitarian” wars to their subjects is to claim that the bloody wars are “for women’s rights”.

Supposedly George W. Bush invaded Iraq, with over a million dead people, millions of wounded people and four million refugees as results, “for Iraqi women’s rights”. In fact, the situation for women in Iraq now is very much worse than before the 2003 invasion.

Supposedly, first George W. Bush, later other NATO governments, invaded Afghanistan “for Afghan women’s rights”. In fact, the new pro NATO regime in Kabul proved to be as misogynistic as their Taliban predecessors, in some cases even worse. Contrary to ads paid by Dutch taxpayers telling Dutch TV viewers to join the air force “to help Afghan girls go to school”, in fact not one Afghan girl more went to school as a result of the bombing by Dutch airplanes. Never mind the Afghan girls killed or wounded by NATO bombs.

In Libya in 2011, ultra religious militias with al Qaeda links were the ground troops of the ‘free world’. After they won that bloody war with the help of NATO bombs and British SAS and Qatari soldiers, they killed the United States ambassador and made the women’s rights situation much worse.

Somalia is another country where NATO governments invaded and waged war. Sometimes the NATO armed forces themselves; sometimes using Ethiopian, Ugandan or Kenyan soldiers as proxy cannon fodder.

This video is called Somali women raped by Ethiopian troops.

In Somalia, the invaders tried to prop a regime in parts of the capital Mogadishu, consisting of brutal warlords who during the 1990s had dragged the dead bodies of US American soldiers through the streets.

How does this pro Pentagon pro NATO government act in women’s rights issues?

From the BBC:

30 January 2013 Last updated at 13:30 GMT

Somalia: Anger over woman charged after alleging rape

A human rights group has urged Somali authorities to drop charges against a woman who accused security forces of raping her.

The woman, who has not been named, could face between three and six years in prison for insulting a government body and making a false accusation.

Four others, including her husband and a journalist, have also been charged.

US-based Human Rights Watch said the charges “made a mockery of the new Somali government’s priorities”.

…

‘Politically motivated’

Attorney General Abdulkadir Mohamed Muse brought charges against the five of insulting a government body and persuading someone to give false evidence or giving false evidence, among other accusations, in a court in the capital, Mogadishu, on Tuesday.
Map

The charged journalist, Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim, has been in detention since 10 January.

Two days earlier he had interviewed the woman about the rape allegations, but did not report the story.

The police allege he collected material for a news report by al-Jazeera about rape in camps for displaced people in Mogadishu. The Qatar-based news network has said Mr Ibrahim was not involved in its story.

According to Human Rights Watch, the woman retracted her allegations after two days of police interrogation without a lawyer present.

Afterwards she was released, but her husband was arrested in her place. A man and woman who helped introduce her to the journalist were also arrested.

Mr Muse told the BBC Somali service on Saturday that the accused had plotted to discredit the government and its security forces – and the woman and her accomplices had been paid by the journalist to lie.

An investigation had revealed that the police station where the woman had originally reported the alleged rape in Hodan, a district in Mogadishu where many displaced people live, had found no medical evidence to back up her rape allegation, he said.

The BBC’s Mohamed Mwalimu in Mogadishu says the woman, who is caring for a child, has to report to the police twice a day. The other four accused remain in jail.

Media organisations in the city have been outraged by the case and have held demonstrations in protest, he says.

“Bringing charges against a woman who alleges rape makes a mockery of the new Somali government’s priorities,” Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

“The police ‘investigation’ in this case was a politically motivated attempt to blame and silence those who report on the pervasive problem of sexual violence by Somali security forces.”

He said donor countries funding Somalia’s police force and criminal justice system needed to make it clear that “they won’t be party to injustices”.

…

When President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was asked about the case on a visit to the US earlier this month, he said it was a legal matter in which he could not interfere.

The trial will resume on Saturday in Banadir regional court in Mogadishu.

See also here.

US-backed Somalia Regime Admits Soldiers Raped Women: here.

U.S.-Backed Somalia Army Accused of Abusing Women: here.

Related articles

• Somalia: Government Charges Woman Who Says She Was Raped By Security Forces (huffingtonpost.com)
• NUSOJ Calls for the Release of the Somali Journalist held for interviewing a Woman who said that She Was raped (appablog.wordpress.com)
• Somali Journalist Arrested After Story on Rape (abcnews.go.com)